i am but a small-winged bird
by hannahsoapy
Summary: Voices and quick footsteps scurried down the stairs, but the boy in the cupboard did not move, so focused on staying still and quiet that he barely breathed.


A/N: A plot bunny held my brain captive and demanded this story as ransom. I made myself cry writing this, so I recommend finding some tissues. It's not a sad ending though, I swear! If you're familiar with Truman Capote's work, the family's death in his book 'In Cold Blood', is essentially how I imagine this first bit going down. If you haven't, it's basically attempted robbery gone wrong.

* * *

_ I am but a small-winged bird:_

_But I will conquer the big world_

_ As the bee-martin beats the crow,_

_By attacking it always from Above._

_ -Sidney Lanier_

* * *

A clinking noise awoke the boy in the middle of the night – his cousin, he assumed, sneaking into the milk and cookies like he usually did at this time of the night. He sighed and waited for him to finish and go back to bed, hoping that maybe he wouldn't jump on the stairs on his way back up.

His cousin took longer than usual downstairs, but eventually the boy in the cupboard beneath the stairs heard the gentle creak of the steps above him, and he breathed a sigh of relief that his cousin went quietly.

Not even a minute later, just barely drifting off, the boy was awoken by a scream, a yell, and two quick gunshots. The boy sat straight up, frightened and confused, struggling to understand what was happening.

It wasn't until he heard a door creak, his cousin's shout, and the third, ominous gunshot that he realized it was no dream. His breathing grew fast and quick, and, although it wouldn't help him at all, he huddled tightly beneath his thin blanket with his eyes fixed on the cupboard latch.

Voices and quick footsteps scurried down the stairs, but the boy in the cupboard did not move, so focused on staying still and quiet that he barely breathed. Frozen in terror, he still did not even stir when the police stamped their way through the house, marking the crime scene.

The police, of course, had no way of knowing he was there. There were no pictures in the house to indicate his presence, or even a setting at the table for him. He made no noise, and they did not bother to open the locked cupboard.

Hours and hours later, an old, bearded, wizened man popped into existence on the driveway of Number Four, and carefully ducked around the crime scene caution tape. He made a gesture with the wand in his hand, whispering quietly, and then strode directly to the cupboard beneath the stairs.

He knocked on the door, and inside, the boy blinked quickly, but did not move.

"Mr. Harry Potter?" the old man asked. The boy stirred a little but made no response.

The old man flicked his wand at the lock, and the door slowly swung open. He peered in at the boy huddled in the corner, watching him warily.

"My name is Albus Dumbledore. I'm here to take you somewhere safe," the old man said. The boy stared at him, eyes wide, taking him in, and the old man waited.

At last, the boy slowly moved, scooting forward off the tiny cot, watching the him the whole time.

"Very good," he said when the boy stood looking up at him. "Now, take my arm."

The boy complied, and with no more noise than he had made arriving at Number Four, they disappeared.

* * *

"Dumbledore," Severus said as he opened the door, concealing his surprise.

"Severus," the old man nodded, as calmly as ever. He stepped back to let him in, and finally noticed the small figure that clung to the headmaster's side. Severus could not be certain if the child was a boy or a girl, although he guessed it was a boy.

The clothes he wore were formless, grey, and baggy, and sagging socks were all that was on his feet. The child kept his head bowed as he shuffled in, shaggy black hair covering his face.

Dumbledore led him down the hall to his sitting room, and Severus followed, flicking his wand to summon the tea service.

"What brings you here?" Severus asked, getting straight to the point, as Dumbledore casually stirred his tea. The headmaster peered over his half-moon glasses.

"I have a favor to ask of you," he said seriously, with the slightest tilt of head to indicate the boy sitting on Severus' sofa.

"No," he said sharply, noticing the child shrink a little into the cushion at his tone. He hadn't needed that proof to know he would be terrible at taking care of a child full-time. Groups of them at set, structured times were all he was willing to handle.

"Oh, it won't be for long," Dumbledore continued. "The school year is almost upon us, and Mr. Potter here will be eleven soon."

The boy looked up in confusion at the headmaster just as Severus registered the name.

"Potter?" He repeated, with a sneer. There was no way he would take care of _Potter's _spawn.

Then the child's attention abruptly swung to him, and Severus thought he might have a heart attack. Most people would easily have said that the boy had inherited his mother's eyes, and they were not wrong, but concealed behind the dark hair he'd gotten from his abysmal father, the glasses, and the sharp scar, the face was all Lily's.

When he recovered, and looked back at Dumbledore, the old man's eyes were twinkling, and Severus cursed his lack of composure.

"Very well," he sighed, and Dumbledore looked at him triumphantly.

"Thank you," he said, setting his teacup down and standing. "Mr. Potter, I leave you in Severus' capable hands. I shall see you in September." He addressed the last to both of them, with a wink at the boy, who looked back at him uncertainly.

Severus followed him to the door, after a glance reassured him that the child was unlikely to get up and start poking around.

"What am I supposed to do with him?" he asked Dumbledore, just before he could apparate away.

"Show him a little compassion?" Dumbledore suggested. "You'll be just fine, Severus. I have no worries." And with that, he was gone.

But _he _still had worries, Severus wanted to scream. He had no idea what to do with a child. He went back to the drawing room, finally, and stared at the boy for a few moments, trying to decide where to start. The beginning, he supposed.

"Why, exactly, did Dumbledore drop you on my doorstep?" The boy nearly jumped out of his skin, and then opened and closed his mouth uselessly once or twice before finding his voice.

"M-my aunt and uncle," he said quietly, "and my cousin, th-they're d-dead."

Well.

Definitely the wrong place to begin. He couldn't exactly feel any sadness, however, that Petunia was dead. Petunia had always angered him, when he and Lily were young.

"I see," Severus said. The boy shrugged, and the giant grey T-shirt slipped off of one of his thin shoulders. The thinness of that shoulder bothered him, for some reason.

"Have you eaten?" Another shrug. Merlin, would both his shoulders fit through the neck of that shirt?

"I ate yesterday." The words were so quiet, he almost didn't hear them.

"Yesterday?" Severus cried, looking aghast at the now frightened child. "It's nearly evening!"

The boy trembled at the volume of his voice and looked down at his feet. Severus forced himself to breath out, long and slow, before he spoke again.

"Right," he told the boy. "Stay here."

* * *

The boy ate as if he was afraid the food might disappear if he did not scarf it down quickly. Severus frowned as he watched him, feeling somewhat disgruntled in a way that he could not put a finger on. The boy finished far before he had expected him to, and stood from his seat, wandering in a general sort of direction towards the kitchen.

"Where are you going?" Severus asked him, not really meaning it to sound so harsh. The boy's shoulders immediately hunched up to his ears, and he looked back timidly.

"To… wash the dishes?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Severus scoffed, although he knew he probably shouldn't. "Give that here."

The child handed him over his plate and fork, looking like he'd just been told he couldn't have any dessert. It made Severus frown again as he took the dishes into the kitchen and flicked his wand to start the dishwashing spell.

He didn't know what it was about the boy that rubbed him all wrong. Well, no. That was a lie. This was Lily's child, of course, but it was also _Potter's_, and no matter how many times he tried to remind himself that it was unfair to treat a child based on what their parent had done, there was something about the child that irritated him.

He sighed and rubbed his forehead. Salazar, he could surely get through at least one evening with a child in his home. With another gusty sigh, he went to fetch the boy from where he'd left him, like a lost waif.

Severus couldn't decipher the look on the boy's face when he showed him his room.

"This room's for me?"

"I haven't any bigger except mine," Severus said dryly. "And you can't have that one."

The child just stared up at him with those wide green eyes, and Severus was suddenly struck with the feeling that he'd misinterpreted something.

"Well," Severus said, feeling a bit awkward, "I'm at the end of the hall. If you need anything."

The boy was still silent, and after a beat or two, Severus took his cue, and left him there.

* * *

Severus awoke in the morning to the smell of something cooking.

He threw on his dressing gown and hurried downstairs to find the boy, balanced on his toes to see the stovetop, frying eggs.

"What are you doing?" Severus asked, his voice raspy from sleep. The boy nearly hit himself in the head with the spatula.

"Making breakfast?" he said timidly.

"I don't eat breakfast," Severus told him, and then immediately regretted it, when the boy's head drooped. He sighed, more in frustration with himself, and reached over the boy's head for the tea kettle, setting it to boil.

"Tea?" Severus asked, getting a cup ready for himself. There was no response, and he turned around to find the boy simply standing there, watching him. Severus raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"Oh! Yes, please," he said quickly. Severus got another cup out and they stood silently until the kettle whistled that the water was ready.

He watched the boy eat his breakfast, sipping his tea slowly, and contemplating what he was going to do with him.

"Is there anything you would like to go get from your house? Clothes, or…," he waved his hand to encompass whatever else a child might want.

To his surprise, the boy merely shrugged. Severus would have thought there would be a little more excitement at the mention of getting his things, but then again, the boy was probably not excited about the prospect of going back to the place where his family was murdered.

After he'd dressed, he held out his arm to the boy for Side-Along, and he looked up at him, and asked, curiously, "Are we teleporting there?"

"I'm… what?" It was the first time the boy had been more than remotely interested in anything, but Severus had no idea what 'teleporting' was.

"Teleporting? Like in Dudley's comics?" At Severus' continued blank look, he added shyly, "It's what Mr. Dumbledore did last night."

"It's called apparition," Severus clarified, relieved to have finally understood what he meant. The muggles had very strange terms for things, he mused, as the boy finally took his arm.

Thankfully, when they arrived at Number Five, there was no one on the street. Severus had forgotten that the muggles might be a concern, but it was mid-morning, on a week-day, and most people appeared to be at work.

He followed the boy inside, expecting him to head to his room first, but instead the boy went to a little closet of sorts, beneath the stairs. Severus sneered inwardly at how spoiled the boy must have been, to have a separate cupboard outside his room to store his toys and things in.

"Okay, I'm done," the boy said a moment later, far sooner than he had anticipated. He looked up at Severus expectantly, holding a sad, meager collection of limp clothing and broken knick-knacks. He'd finally got shoes on, but they were laced as tight as they could go and were still clearly too large.

Severus felt his blood run cold, several things dawning on him all at once, as he finally looked past the boy into the cupboard.

It wasn't for storing _things._

The floor of the cupboard was taken up by a thin mattress that couldn't have been half the boy's height. A small, nearly flat pillow, and a thin blanket were all that was on the bed. There was some shelving at one end of the space, and on the bottom-most he could see a meager stack of clothes, that in both quality and appearance were not much different from what the boy was already holding.

Severus would be the first to admit he did not particularly like children but _this_–

If he had not cared before that Petunia was dead, well, now he was more than glad that she was. Even he knew that children should not be housed in cupboards beneath stairs and dressed like vagabonds. He wanted to go and find Dumbledore and shout at him, demand an answer, because surely – surely, he must not have known.

And, dear Merlin, he thought, thinking back on the boy's behavior. Trying to do the dishes, his surprise at his room, cooking breakfast in the morning – he had to wonder, to what extent had Petunia's neglect –

No. No, that was too light a word for what he saw now. Call it what it really was, he thought, and forced himself to acknowledge it – the boy had been abused by his own relatives, those who should have cared for him.

"M-Mr. Severus, sir?"

Severus' gaze flicked to the boy's eyes, wide, green, and confused – for a moment they were _Lily's _– and jolted him back to reality.

"You don't have anything else you'd like to get… Harry?" he asked, already knowing the answer, but desperately hoping he was wrong.

He had no such luck, however, as Harry merely shook his head, glasses slipping down his nose. Severus let out a long, shaky breath, momentarily closing his eyes. If he spoke, he was sure he'd crack, so he nodded sharply, and turned to leave the house, Harry on his heels.

He apparated them away from Number Four with a fierce desire to never set eyes on the place again.

* * *

"Go put on whatever you have that's most presentable," Severus ordered, as soon as they arrived at Spinner's End. It came out too gruffly, but Harry didn't seem fazed by it this time, tilting his head instead to look up at him questioningly.

"We're going to get you new clothes," Severus told him. "You'll need them for school anyway," he added, as a sort of instinctive urge to downplay his own generosity. Harry's eyes sparked brighter though, and he couldn't regret that, really.

"School?" Harry asked. "Is that what Mr. Dumbledore meant? When he said he'd see me in September?"

"Yes, of course. He is the Headmaster at Hogwarts," Severus said, a bit thrown by Harry's lack of knowledge. "Go on, get dressed. We haven't all day."

They did, in fact, have most of the day left, but Severus needed a moment to himself. Merlin's beard, he hadn't even considered Petunia's hatred of magic. What in the name of Slytherin had she told him about his heritage? About _Lily_?

He would have to assume Petunia had told him nothing. He shuddered, head bowing a little as he realized how much he still had to ask Harry. Some of it – well, some of it would have to wait. He wasn't ready for it himself.

All too soon, the sound of little feet came clomping down the stairs and Severus took what felt like his hundredth deep breath that day.

"Harry, have you ever done anything… unusual?"

He immediately looked terrified. Severus's heart sank.

"I – not on purpose, I promise! I didn't – I didn't mean to!" He cried, tears pooling in his eyes. "I-I'm a freak."

Severus stilled at the word, and Harry seemed to sense it, gulping down his silent sobs and watching him fearfully, like a fawn caught in a trap.

"Who called you that?" Severus demanded coldly. Harry trembled.

"A-Aunt P-Petunia."

He couldn't even say he didn't expect it, but it didn't stop him from feeling like something was breaking inside him.

"Look at me," Severus said firmly, and the shaking boy looked at him. "Your aunt was wrong; you are not a freak. You're a wizard, Harry."

"A – a what?"

"A wizard," Severus repeated. "I am one, too. And so was your mother, and your father."

Harry's face completely transformed; he looked _happy_ for the first time since he came to Severus's house, and it took him back, for a second, back to a day when he ran into a young Lily Evans and told her something similar, told her she wasn't abnormal, or strange, or a _freak_, that she was just like him.

"Really?" Lily's son breathed, balanced on a precipice of hope and wonder.

"Really," Severus told him, with every amount of sincerity he could pour into one word.

And Harry smiled at him, a small, delightful, sneaking smile that fought its way onto his face, while he was still dripping tears and sniffling, and at the sight of it, though he would always deny it –

Severus smiled, too.


End file.
